


ice ice buddy

by babypapaya



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Cuddles, Established Relationship, Fluff, Hockey, Ice Skating, M/M, gratuitous canadianism, trying to avoid letterkenny references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-07-29 05:44:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20077126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babypapaya/pseuds/babypapaya
Summary: Alex has never skated before, and Lance is going to teach him. Neither stay on task for very long, because Lance can't believe Alex only knows three Canadian athletes: none of which are Wayne Gretzky.





	ice ice buddy

**Author's Note:**

> my first serious ship writing ever?? wow
> 
> they're cute together, shh.

Pressing icy fingertips into his cheeks, Alex shivers. He isn’t sure what he has been expecting from a building which has a sole purpose of housing ice, but he should have brought gloves. Blinking, his gaze drops downward, his eyes coming to rest on the soft dark hair of the man kneeling in front of him, a man with glowing cheeks, passion in his eyes, and full hands. Lance glances up at Alex, the brightest smile on his oh-so-very-baby face, and the softest laugh bursts from his throat.

“Cold hands already, eh? I’ll just have to make sure you keep holding mine.” The incredibly smug Canadian wraps Alex’s hockey skate laces around his palm and gives them a hard tug. Alex chokes as his toes lose all nerve sensation. 

“Ouch, I think my feet will be blue after this, if I even have feet left,” he winces, but trails off into a giggle as he transfers his chilly hands from his cheeks to his partner’s, intently aware of the blush washing over Lance’s skin and the heat springing to both of their faces. 

Lance relaxes the laces just a bit. “Well, you’re not going to skate on floppy ankles on my watch, they’d, ahh, banish me from Quebec if I let you do that.” He loops the laces around the skate and ties them off with a quick bow. “No pain, no gain, baby!” 

Wobbling to his feet, Alex straightens up from the rinkside bench just long enough to clatter forward into the backside of the boards, knuckles white from both the cold and his death grip on the battered plastic railing. The ice is empty, the white light beaming down from the rafters seeming to echo and bounce around the expanse. A blank scoreboard dominates one wall, the rafters cluttered with banners, and a tinny speaker blares a harsh blend of classic rock, ads in Quebecois French, and Celine Dion. It’s a wholly unwelcoming space, but despite the chill at his fingertips and the almost caustically sterile air, he wants to be here. He turns to watch Lance, who is making quick work of his own skates, and he bites his lip to hide a smile. Somehow his partner had managed to wrangle a private ice surface for his first time in skates, demanded that Alex learn, and insisted that Alex could learn from no one else. Alex had swallowed his apprehension, not left untouched by the gesture from his sweetie. _ His boy. _

_My boy, _ he thought. 

“Your coach today," Lance adds with his signature grin, his slow sweet Canadian accent draping his words like drizzled maple syrup.

"Ah, did I say that out loud?" Alex asks, raising an eyebrow. In contrast, his own accent is full of clipped, sharp corners, and almost sounds wrong in this space. Maybe he'll crash into the rink boards a few times, dull those pointy edges, and fit into Lance's world a little better.

Lance strips the skate guards from his blades and stands up, covering Alex's hand on the rink rail and lacing their fingers together. "I can't be your boy when you're _ my _ boy, buddy." Brown eyes lock onto brown eyes and Lance gives Alex's hand a tug. "Let's do this! 

Alex doesn't look too nervous, Lance thinks, but he himself sure is. He so desperately wants his new boyfriend to have a good time. Alex's only other time in Canada has been for the Canadian GP, which only amounted to a mysterious and unsatisfying retirement, and Lance knows that though he can't make that up to him, he can help Alex have a better second round in Canada. And that, he has decided, includes some ice time.

Hopping the rink boards, Lance hits the ice with the ease and stability of a—a hockey boy, for lack of a word more truthful than the truth. In skates since he was probably in infant, the low temperature of the dry air does more to warm his blood than chill his bones. Alex, however, still clutching Lance’s hand across the boards, teeters over to the bench door, uncharacteristically wobbly.

“You’re, ah, juuuust a little taller than usual on those blades,” Lance laughs, leaning across to lift the door latch and swing it open. Alex’s gaze drops to the ice, and Lance sees him swallow once before their eyes meet, and he sees the smile in his partner’s eyes before the grin spreads across his face. 

Excitement. Incredible happiness. Anticipation sprinkled with the tiniest amount of nerves. _ Trust above all else _. For a second, everything around him fades into the background. Lance can’t believe the purity of emotions that Alex shows to him already, the openness he shares after only such a short time together. 

Alex can’t believe he let Lance talk him into strapping on bladed boots to spend an afternoon in a refrigerator. “Alright, coach, let’s do this.” He brings up his other hand to meet Lance’s, and cold brave fingers are gently clasped into a warm, solid, capable palm. A palm that has held far more hockey sticks than cute boy hands, but Lance isn’t complaining at all. 

“That’s a good boy, come on, let’s go!” Lance tugs at Alex just a little, and the rookie cautiously transfers one foot at a time from the soft matting of the bench floor to the unforgiving ice. 

His eyes widening, his feet wobble just a little before finding a stationary stability as sunshine breaks out across his face. “Am I doing it? Is this skating?” he half laughs, tentatively wiggling his feet.

“You’re almost there, bud. Keep moving those feet, keep your ankles straight.” Facing him, Lance keeps his grip on Alex’s hands as he slowly skates backwards, towing his student into open ice away from the boards. “You know, ahh, when you’re rollerblading? And you like, weave your feet to build momentum.”

“Okay…” Alex pushes, but it feels like he’s only grinding the blades into the ice. “Don’t lift my feet?”

“Nope, just glide. Bend the knees, ahh, keep it loose. Relaxed. There we go!” he praises, as Alex slides inch by precious inch across the surface. “You’re doing amazing.”

“I was starting to think my best option for moving on ice would be the zamboni,” Alex jokes, pulling himself closer to his anchor on the slick surface. Lance is warm, if anything, and so stable as he folds Alex into close his arms. “You want to lift me here and skate laps, Scott Moir?”

“Is he like, the only Canadian skater you know?” Lance snickers, hoisting Alex an inch off the ice and toeing his skates into the ice to push into a half spin.

“Bold of you—Lance!” Alex breaks off, caught off guard and dissolving into giggles. “No, do that again!” He wraps his arms more comfortably around Lance’s neck as the stronger skater swoops him up again, an arm around his shoulders and another under his legs.

“Like this, buddy?”

“Yes, please and thanks.”

“Teamwork makes the dream work, baby.”

“I think this is my favourite way to skate. This is why they call them coaches, right?” Alex settles against Lance as he’s towed around the ice, the chill biting at his face a little more harshly than before, but he doesn’t mind. “I was going to say,” he resumes conversationally, “that it’s bold of you to assume I know any more than three Canadian athletes ever.”

“Yeah, bud? Who?” Lance asks, more distracted by how soft it feels to have Alex nestling his head on his shoulder than by how much extra weight his boyfriend is to haul around. 

“Well, obviously there’s Gilles and Jacques Villeneauve, and the last one should be easy. They’re my favourite.”

“Who, Gretzky? Crosby? Rocket Richard?” Lance is fully warmed up now, skating effortless laps around the rink.

“Nope,” Alex says lazily. He’s enjoying his tow right now, and—unsurprisingly—this bit of speed makes him understand why people think skating is fun. “I don’t know any of them.”

“Alex, I’m going to drop you, like, _ right now _ for telling me such a thing.” 

And Lance does, towing his cargo to centre ice and lowering him as brutally as you’d drop a baby bird from their nest onto the ground. Alex’s feet slip out from underneath him and he flails, scrambling for mercy from the 15 centimetre free-fall that Lance left his butt in. “Oof.” 

“This is such betrayal,” Lance calls back over his shoulder, skating away from an incredibly un-Canadian boyfriend of his. “I can’t believe you would tell me such a thing, like, the merciful thing would be to at least, ahh, pretend to know _ Gretzky _.”

“Laaaance,” Alex fusses. He looks very alone and a tad forlorn in the centre of the ice, managing to sit up but rubbing his hands together. “Ice is melting on my butt and if I try to stand up I’ll die,” he declares. 

Lance looks back, hiding a massive grin. “I’ll come back and help you if do one thing for me.” 

“I’m trying not to die, so yes. Up, please,” Alex promises, engaging puppy eyes and reaching out for a boost up. Lance would never leave him here, he knows that. _ But have I missed something important? Something intrinsically cultural? Will this be just be the first of many in a cross-cultural relationship? _

“I’ll fix you up, then.” Lance glides back to his rescue, shavings of ice flying as he scrapes to a stop. 

_ I guess I’ll have to get used to being dusted with ice. _ Alex wipes the chill from his face, soon to learn this was called getting snowed, and turns his glance up at Lance. 

_ The whole world is really in that face _ , Lance realises. There’s an openness in his eyes that Lance rarely catches a glimpse of, and he knows the cameras see it even less. _ All the beauty, all the laughter, all the grace. And one little hint of the wisdom and sadness, too. _

He wants to tell Alex this somehow, to somehow let him know _ he knows _, but he has no idea where to start, so he just says, “You have to come to the next Habs game with me. If you’re going to manage in Montreal, ahh… you need to know some hockey, buddy.” 

For a moment, Alex thinks he sees something more… _ more esoteric _ , he thinks, in the keen brown eyes of the man standing above him. But the millisecond passes and he has no idea how to ask, so he just says, “If you let me wear your hockey sweater with the _ Stroll 18 _ on the back, sure!” 

“I’m holding you to that, buddy.”

Alex nods, a smile warming his face as he reaches up, wiggling his fingers at Lance expectantly. “Come on, lift your end of the deal now!”

So he reaches down, callused fingers drawn magnetically to the softer ones he's only had the smallest taste of so far, his desperation so politely measured that he doesn't even know he's wanting. The peace in these hands is so warmly tangible and the comfort so overwhelming that Lance doesn't notice the solace turn to mischief until he's free falling, yanked off his balance and dropped through the crispy cold air, tumbling off his skates into Alex's arms. Strong arms, capable of pushing a car around endless circuits, full of both betrayal and then comfort for said betrayed boyfriend in the form of a crushing hug.

“Sorry,” Alex announces, his voice muffled in Lance’s thick and fluffy hair, arms full of Canadian.

“If you want to go mitts off on ice, schmelt, this isn’t gonna go well for you,” Lance warns, lunging forward in Alex’s grip to knock them both flat on the ice. 

Alex yelps. “You can’t fight me, I’m a pacifist!” He rolls over, grabbing Lance’s shoulders and pushing him over. Flat on his back, Lance can hear the breaths dragging through his throat, spots the tiny tremble in Alex’s jaunty smile, the way he chews the inside of his cheek. Gazing up at his boyfriend isn’t a bad position to be in, he reflects, even if his back is melting damp spots from the ice into his shirt. “I just want to talk,” Alex says so quietly it’s barely louder than an exhale.

Lance lowers his voice too, suddenly almost reverent. “Yeah, buddy?” 

Their legs already tangled, Alex snuggles down against Lance’s chest and wraps a cold hand around his flushed cheek with a breathless laugh. The Canadian’s breath hitches. It’s not that Alex isn’t usually cuddly, but centre ice is definitely a unique location. Lance certainly couldn’t have predicted this when he was playing peewee minor hockey.

“It’s you, _ buddy _,” Alex whispers cheekily. 

“Me?”

Alex nods. “You,” he repeats firmly. “You’re the third one I know, you’re my favourite Canadian athlete.” He slips his fingertips across Lance’s jawline, sliding his palm up to cup his cheek, thumb tip just catching the corner of his full lips. 

Lance blinks slowly, letting Alex nudge his head forward. Through the faintest daze, this boy’s touch is the only thing he can really focus on, and he wraps his arms tight around him and tugs him up close, face to face, the tips of their two cold noses dangerously close. He slips a hand up to trace the lightest patterns on the back of Alex’s neck, scrape his fingertips through the perfectly kept short hair. “Hey,” Lance breathes ever so quietly, a softness that belies the intensity in his eyes. Then they flutter closed as he pulls Alex in, placing the world’s softest kiss on the corner of Alex’s mouth. He keeps them shut as his boyfriend nearly squeaks in response and aims a much more directed, slightly rougher kiss straight on his mouth. His eyes are shut and Alex’s lips are so warm, so insistent, just a little chapped but he feels their whispery roughness for only a second before that sensation is replaced by the much firmer demand of teeth landing a small bite on his lower lip. “Baby,” he murmurs into the kiss, lingering a second more before pulling back, that nibble so _ unlike _ the usual Alex. He’s so warm he feels like he’s melting a hole straight through the ice, which is freezing on his skin, but Alex is so hot and clingy on top of him.

Alex snuggles in closer, tucking his head into the crook of Lance’s shoulder. “Lance,” he whispers. “Is that what they call a face-off?”

A half laugh, half growl escapes Lance as it’s his turn to now shove Alex away, up and off of his chest and roll him over, pushing him into the ice and only catching the most incoherent of giggles as Alex celebrates his own joke. 

“_You _ —” Lance leans in to plant a kiss on one cheek— “ _are going _ —” another kiss on the other— “ _to be soooo _ —” multiple kisses here, like confetti on the podium, all over Alex’s face— “ _Canadian _ —” forehead kiss— “ _when I’m done with you _.” Their lips meet carefully this time, parting ever so slightly, but Alex has the grace not to bite this time. “You will never say a joke like that again—” and Lance collapses onto his boyfriend, wrapping him in the tightest embrace. 

Alex is giggling helplessly now, _probably almost in tears _, Lance thinks. “You can try to stop me, but I can’t promise anything will be effective,” Alex declares, nudging his way into a less crushing hug. He still grips his boyfriend’s hand, but they extract themselves from each others’ hug to stretch out together, Lance on his side against Alex stretched flat on his back, draping a protective arm across Alex’s comforting frame. It’s an awkward icy spoon, and Lance knows in a few minutes Alex will be too cold and need to get up, but for a few moments he’s happy to lie there, side by side on centre ice.

_ There’s probably something poetic about this, _ Lance reflects absentmindedly, _ but I’m too happy now to analyse it. _

_ There’s definitely something poetic about this, _ Alex realises. _ But I don’t know enough about hockey to explain it. _

After a few contented moments, Lance breaks the silence. “Hey buddy?”

“Yeah?”

“You know how, like, everyone except Max sucks at FIFA?”

“Yeah…”

Lance lifts his head to place one last kiss on Alex’s jaw. “Get ready to suck at NHL20, too."

**Author's Note:**

> I think all hockey/rink terminology should be self explanatory, but if not:
> 
> Boards: the side walls of the rink, about a metre high  
Bench: little booth behind the boards with a (guess what?) bench for the players  
Centre ice: the circle in the middle where everything starts  
Skate guards: plastic little shoes for the skate blades to keep them clean and safe in transport  
Schmelt: person who is new at playing hockey and bad at playing hockey  
Wayne Gretzky, Sidney Crosby, Maurice "Rocket" Richard: probably the most well known Canadian hockey players of all time
> 
> hope you enjoyed!! I appreciate any comments <3


End file.
